The challenge in compiling the 5 Best Songs Of The Week isn’t determining which songs deserve to be included and which don’t, it’s determining which deserving songs to cut and which to keep. This week presented us with a ridiculous assortment of Best Songs, so many that we could have come up with at least three alternate configurations of this list that would have been totally reasonable. So, you ask, where’s School Of Seven Bells and Hiss Messenger and Ballet School and Robert Plant and Jamie xx and the Juan Maclean and Cymbals Eat Guitars and Rustie? Fret not. They are all on this list this week — they’re just on some alternate configuration of this list existing in some alternate universe. Here, meanwhile, are the 5 Best Songs Of The Week in this universe:

Does this song sound like it was engineered in a laboratory by exacting pop-music scientists bent on obliterating whatever remains of the line between radio pop and “indie rock”? Well, it kind of was, and its very existence is an argument for the continuing vitality of such endeavors. “OctaHate” sparkles, snaps, and booms with the best of them. More importantly, though, the song introduces us to Weaver, a singer who has turned a compelling, almost unsettling number of very talented people into her loyal evangelists. We haven’t yet heard enough of her work to fully understand why Weaver, as opposed to any number of other SoundCloud parvenues, has captured so many vibrant imaginations. Here’s a start: She exhibits impeccable taste and a powerful control of her voice, pirouetting across the effervescent gleam with the graceful assurance of a born star. There’s a ferocity in her vocals here that matches her apparently relentless drive to succeed. May she and her followers keep on making music like this for many years to come. –Chris

I used to be annoyed that one of the best songs off Hurry Up We’re Dreaming had a title as lazy as “Intro,” but lately I’ve begun to realize how appropriate it was. Played in countless commercials and movie trailers, it wasn’t just the intro to that album, it was a grand introduction to Zola Jesus as a pop star. Now with her debut single from the upcoming Taiga (and debut for Mute, not coincidently the same label that M83 calls home), that has become cemented even more. “Dangerous Days” is undeniably huge, but it’s smart in that the synths and drums (the latter often bring to mind Kate Bush’s eternally untouchable “Running Up That Hill“) all act together to support her overwhelming performance. The only quiet part of “Dangerous Days” comes in the first couple seconds, a brief buzzing drone that would have grown even noisier in her early work, but here it’s faint and distant. Those days are far behind her now; there’s no turning back. –Miles

It’s going to be hard to separate this one from its brain-breaking video, but consider this: FKA twigs may be the only singer in the game who can deliver the line “Feel your body closing, I can rip it open” like it’s a seduction. “Two Weeks” is a song about losing yourself completely in another person’s body, disappearing into that fogged-up mental state where you’re not sure where you end and the other begins. That’s a holy state, and twigs treats it like one, letting her voice flit and waft and double up all over the tracks and synths sigh and digital basslines groan. If the video is an Aaliyah homage, and it might be, then the song is one of the finest stoned makeout jams to come along since “Rock The Boat.” –Tom

In 2012, well before Deafheaven were popping up in Apple ads, before Sunbather topped year-end lists, and before “Dream House” was rounding out 1 million plays on Spotify, Pallbearer were the breakthrough metal band of that year, thanks to their debut, Sorrow & Extinction. That position is really one of the only things the two bands have in common (aside from the fact that they’re currently touring together), and now Pallbearer are in a daunting spot, something that Deafheaven will surely find themselves up against in a couple years: How do you follow something so definitive? In the case of the doom metal colossus “The Ghost I Used To Be,” Pallbearer show no signs of slowing down by doing exactly what they do best which is … uh … slowing down, actually. “Ghost” is one of Pallbearer’s greatest exercises in momentum. Crashing right in with a towering guitar lead, they immediately shift down and slowly burn back to that intensity over the song’s 10+ minutes as Brett Campbell starts streaking back in his force-of-nature vocals. Once Pallbearer begin hitting with full force, that lurching doom pace takes on an overwhelming heaviness — and that’s when the drums begin speeding up and the band unleash that bloody war cry, right at 4:23. It takes just under six minutes for the band to get back to that riff on which they came swooping in, that crushing, devastating peak that they ride out for the second half of the song. It’s a hell of a moment, the sound of a band steadily growing unstoppable. –Miles

If this had been a Rihanna song, as Grimes originally intended it to be, it would’ve been a pretty bad Rihanna song. It doesn’t have the icy definition that the best Rihanna songs have, the clear and defined single-mindedness that pushes a song like “We Found Love” or “Don’t Stop The Music” so deep into your lizard brain. As a Grimes song, though, it’s revelatory, perfectly molded to her soft voice and spectral delivery. At its best, Claire Boucher’s music is all rapturous reverie; it’s music that gently encircles you. “Go” does all that, but it uses that style in service of a pop song that hammers even as it twinkles. People are talking about the dubstep drops on this song like they’re pure blasphemy, but when was the last time a drop made you feel like you were floating? If this is where she’s going, I’m going with her. –Tom